Month: September 2020

Edmonton Notes for September 27, 2020

Thanks for the feedback on the new format last week. I’m going to stick with it for now.

A big week for Taproot Edmonton

Last week was a big one for us at Taproot Edmonton. Emily Rendell-Watson started as managing editor, our first full-time hire. We’re so glad to have her on the team! Emily will be taking over the Council and Tech Roundups, leading much of our People’s Agenda work, and tackling many other upcoming editorial projects. As Karen said, it feels good to have created a job in journalism, especially given the constant stream of layoffs at mainstream newsrooms in our city.

Our growth has been made possible in part by our B2B service, and this week we were named a finalist for "Business Idea of the Year" in the 2020 LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers Awards for that effort. It’s a welcome bit of validation for us.

We capped the week off with the 100th episode of Speaking Municipally. It has been more than two years now since our first episode, but in a lot of ways it feels like we’re just getting started. I know that’s a cliché, but downloads continue to rise, we’re incorporating new voices into the show, and we have a municipal election coming up in a year.

Beautiful colors in the river valley

Winter is coming, but hopefully not too soon. I took this photo today in the Mill Creek Ravine near the Shamrock Curling Club.

Fall in Edmonton

It’s a beautiful time of year to be in Edmonton!

Other recent headlines

  • I’m thrilled that city council endorsed Indigenous names for the city’s wards. Assuming the names receive final approval by the end of the year, they’ll be in use for next year’s municipal election. My ward will be called "O-day’min" from the Anishinaabe language which means "Strawberry or Heart-berry (The heart through which the North Saskatchewan River runs)." It’ll take some practice for the rest of the names, but I will learn how to say them all.
  • Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) is now Explore Edmonton Co. rather than Edmonton Tourism as had been anticipated. The Explore Edmonton campaign has been fantastic, so I can see why they’d want to build on that. Not to mention that exploring your own city is going to be increasingly important as the pandemic continues to restrict tourism from elsewhere.
  • GLC Medical (a subsidiary of Edmonton-based Graphene Leaders Canada) will run clinical trials at the Edmonton International Airport (EIA) for a new COVID-19 test that can produce results in less than a minute. This is very exciting and I have my fingers crossed!
  • From the saw-that-coming-a-mile-away department: the NHL bubble hasn’t done anything for local businesses. “We haven’t really seen much, to be honest with you,” said Scott Krebs with Kelly’s Pub.

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Edmonton Notes for September 20, 2020

Trying a different format this week!

Stanley Milner library reopens downtown

The Stanley A. Milner library downtown reopened this week after nearly four years of revitalization work. Capacity was limited for the grand opening weekend, but we booked a timeslot for Saturday and were able to visit. The inside is beautiful, and I look forward to spending a lot of time there post-pandemic. Emily had lots of fun exploring the children’s library, and I was very happy to see so much seating (all with power oulets) throughout the building. I didn’t have a chance to explore the new Makerspace, but I did write a little about that in the Tech Roundup.

EPL Stanley Milner Reopening

While the inside of the library looks great, I still think the outside is ugly. Saying "you can’t judge a book by its cover" or "it’s what’s on the inside that counts" are just nice ways of saying what is plainly true – the outside of the library is a big disappointment. Edmonton deserves better.

I hope the gigantic air vent outside the main entrance of the library is temporary (maybe it is particularly loud right now because of LRT construction). It sounds like a jet engine. You simply cannot have a conversation with someone anywhere near the front door. The beautiful central library in Calgary literally has a train running through it and I don’t remember any uncomfortable or unpleasant noise during any of my many visits.

Other recent headlines

  • City Council’s Audit Committee has directed Administration to look at reducing the number of supervisors in the City of Edmonton’s workforce. That’s the right call. The excuse that the numbers are off because the City hired more technical people in-house to help make sure projects would be delivered on-time and on-budget feels anachronistic to me. That said, tens of millions of dollars on a few too many City staff is better than hundreds of millions of dollars on far too many consultants, so I guess we’re making progress.
  • I am very excited about our city’s new Indigenous ward names and I look forward to learning the correct pronunciation of each. If you’re worried about that, check out Councillor Paquette’s tweet!
  • Edmonton will host the 2021 world junior hockey championship from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5 without fans in attendance. I hope the bubble is smaller than it has been for the NHL playoffs. I want to be able to cross 102 Street again without needing to make a huge detour. If it must be closed for the bubble, maybe we can get a walkway installed to allow pedestrians to cross over top of the fencing? I mean, if we can spend more than $100 million to save 3 minutes for drivers on Terwillegar Drive, surely we can put up some temporary stairs for pedestrians downtown.
  • The Edmonton Police Service unveiled its new $500,000 tank – I mean, armoured vehicle – this week. "Without the proper tools, things get more dangerous and we can’t respond as quickly," said Sgt. Rick Abbott. Uh huh, I’m sure that vehicle is going to help with response times. He continued: "It does look aggressive. But the reality is we can’t get involved in politics in my job. We’re too busy trying to keep Edmontonians safe." Oh FFS. Council, and Councillor Scott McKeen in particular, should be ashamed for letting this purchase go ahead, especially after making such a big deal about the e-bike rebates earlier this year.

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